]]>23720Fri, 07 Oct 2016 22:53:42 +0000[3D] Unity Photogrammetry Workflowhttp://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/28868-3d-unity-photogrammetry-workflow/This guide written by Sébastien Lachambre, Sébastien Lagarde, Cyril Jover describes a step-by-step process for producing high-quality, reusable, and game-ready digital assets from photos and video. And do not be embarrassed by that it is written for Unity.

It so helpful that in some sort you can call it a bible for those who might be interested in scanning real world objects to make game assets. And I really suggest you to try it by your self. It so fun!

And it so easy that you can use even a camera from your mobile phone! Ofcource for quality which is used in AAA games like Battlefront you need a really expensive equipment (it listed in this guide as well), but I'm pretty sure that with some hand work you can do it without expensive hardware. I guess the only things you'll need is a good camera (which is not very rare in modern days) and straight hands.

Also a subscription for Reality Capture (the best software for photogrammetry atm) can be bought in Steam. It is not very expensive and there are regional prices, which is very important for poor countries.

I've even tried it by my self and I was so impressed with how easy it is. Pure magic.

The first thing I learned is that you need a very good flash card, and better a few. What a pity that my camera is an obsolete.

Here is the result of a birch from my courtyard ))

Ofcourse there are plenty of work should be done to make something usable from this, but it is still extremly faster than sculpt and texture it in a traditional way.

And here some handle from the door, which I found on my balcony...

Ofcourse there is no need to scan objects like this, cause you can model them pretty easily, but anyway, I did it in 5 mins just for some testing...

Also if you have a drone - you can theoretically even scan landscapes and get some textures and height maps from it to make a real world maps (you can even rescan a 3D scans from Google maps for example, but if something happends - It's not me who told you xD).

]]>28868Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:40:45 +0000[Mapping] Creating Realistic Splatmaps From Satellite Imageshttp://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/28800-mapping-creating-realistic-splatmaps-from-satellite-images/
This video shows you how to generate very realistic splatmaps from a satellite image. This technique ends up looking similar to a colormap but without the drawbacks.

An addendum to this video is found here:

]]>28800Mon, 21 Aug 2017 18:29:33 +0000[Mapping] So you want to make a squad maphttp://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/28799-mapping-so-you-want-to-make-a-squad-map/
Here you can find my series of tutorials on creating a map for Squad. The series already covers most of the basics for creating a map from scratch, and will be expanded to include any aspects necessary for creating a map.

A link to the entire playlist is here:

The current list of planned episodes is here:

Gamemodes/layers

Lighting/Postprocessing

Foliage tool

Vertex Painting

If you have any suggestions for future episodes please post them in this thread.

]]>28799Mon, 21 Aug 2017 18:26:48 +0000[Blueprints] Adding a new faction to Squadhttp://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/28792-blueprints-adding-a-new-faction-to-squad/
In the last few days there has been some confusion on how to add new factions into the SDK. I tried to do a basic guide in form of a video tutorial on how to add a faction, define the roles and apply a basic retexture as a player model.

I hope you find it helpful.

Please be aware that:

I'm austrian and english isn't my native language, so if that turns you off, I can't help you, I make mistakes

This was recorded "live" and didn't receive a lot of cuts (other than the SDK startup etc.), so there will be mistakes in it and they will be fixed in the video.

This isn't an "official" way by any means, it's just how I found it out by trial and error and looking at the current factions.

Any questions? Shoot away! Or find me lurking on Discord on the Modding Hub

]]>28792Mon, 21 Aug 2017 15:26:08 +0000[3D] How to do Blends and Welding Seamshttp://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/18211-3d-how-to-do-blends-and-welding-seams/
Hi, community, finally devs did this section. So first tutorial from me.

In this tutorial I would like to talk about texel density.
If you will work some time in the commercial gaming companies, you will definitely meet this concept in their documentation.
And this is no accident, because it is really important aspect of asset production.
So what is texel density and why it so important?

What is texel density?

Before answering this question first of all it is necessary to define what is a texel...

From wikipedia:

Quote

A texel, texture element, or texture pixel is the fundamental unit of a texture map, used in computer graphics. Textures are represented by arrays of texels representing the texture space, just as other images are represented by arrays of pixels.

Texel simple language - it is a pixel of the texture. Even if these concepts are similar, but not identical, you can perceive texel the same as the pixel. And a texel density is the number of texels per unit of the squre virtual (game) space.

Why texel density is important?

It's simple. The higher a texel density, the more detailed the texture on the screen.

And the opposite: the less texture density, the more blurred the texture will be on the screen.

But that's not all...

Game scenes are usually composed of a plurality of objects. And because the games do teams consisting of several people, and because it is difficult to determine the size of your texture relative to other objects this may lead to the fact that each object in the scene will have varying degrees of detail. Here is an example from Internet:

As you can see on this picture walls and barrels are more crisp while the texture on the floor is very blurry.

That is why it is important that the texel density of the textures should be standardized at least for an environment assets.

But above all, it should be said that the texel density is not a mandatory rule. It can vary depending on your needs and possibilities, well at least if you know what you're doing.

You can vary texel density inside a single object to distribute texture space proportional to the number of details that you want to show.

For example if you doing the vehicle, you can double texel dencity on parts with high dencity of details like steel hawser, or for parts which player will be able to see very close (for example parts of the cabin) and you can decrese texel density for parts which is gonna be hard to reach for the player (such as the bottom) to save some texture space.

Here some examples:

And here what you gonna get if you if you do not pay enough attention to this issue:

Should we use any software for this?

I have met a couple of ways on the internet about how to calculate it manually.

But I will not bring this methods here, because it's hard to imagine a person who will do it manually every time.

Generally every game company (at least with whom I have worked) has its own piece of software (usually a script) that is measuring the texure density of UV shells that you are selecting.

But we are not game company and we need some free solutions for that. And we have some of them for different programs (3ds max, Maya etc.) in the Internet and they are free.

I will discuss about one solution for 3ds max (becasue it's harder to find).

It's called Advanced UV Normaliser. The problem is that from version 2.0 it's not free.

I also heard that TexTools can somehow adjust texel density but I've never tried because I don't like TexTools.

Anyway. I've got an old version of Advanced UV Normaliser which you can download here.

And here is an official site where you can buy lastest version of this script in case you need it.

How to run this script?

You can drag & drop it in max viewport. Or u can select it via Scripts>Run Script.

What's next?

First of all you must decide what value you will be using. And the problem is that it depends on your project.

But in today's games (at least in those that I work) I have seen the values of 400-512 pixel per meter (p/m) on average.

And if we talk about Unreal, in case of 512 p/m we have to use 2048x2048 texture for square 4x4 meters. That sounds reasonable if you ask me. Because in Unreal one floor is usually 3-4 meters height (link).

This mean that I suggest you to use for average texel rate any number between 400 and 512 (Not less than 400 and not higher than 512).

However it's you should decide, I did not insist.

Next you should set up your units (Unreal using centimeters). Here is a tutorial about how to set up centimeters in Max. Pay attention that you can leave "Generic Units" in "Units Setup" tab and only change system units to centimeters (And I suggest you to do that, because max works more handy in this case).

So how do we set texel density for crist sake?

Fist of all you should add Unwrap UVW modifier to your model and launch Advanced UV Normaliser.

Next you select any UV Shell for that you want to measure.

After that In Advanced UV Normaliser interface you select Custom (1.) and set a texture dimentions that you would like to use (2.) and then you press Get Texel Density, after that you will see the result in the Ratio Geom/Pixel section (4.) In our case its 4.1819 pixels per centimeter (400 p/m).

If you don't like the number that you get, you can rescale your UV Shells or change texture dimentions untill you get something that you like.

In this series of tutorials we'll be exporting weapons and animations from specifically 3DSMAX, and learning how to set up a typical weapon using the current system available in the Squad SDK.

Going into the future as Weapons themselves are given a rewrite, as well as changes to the animation system get launched, the methods and specifically authoring will need to change. But just for now if you are really keen on seeing your weapons perform in-game and using the current system, please follow this guide.

Exporting a Weapon to the SDK from 3DSMAX

1. Separate out all the pieces that you will be animating, making sure that the pivots are where you want each piece to be. Ensure that the weapon points towards Negative Y axis, and also is set to half scale.

2. Name all pieces in ascending order from 1, using the naming convention Bip01 Weapon<NUMBER> , without the brackets.The main mesh of the weapon needs to be called Bip01 Weapon1, and everything else can go off that. All other meshes will need to be parented to Weapon1.

3. Export the weapon as a FBX file, using the settings below.

4. When in the SDK, import a new Skeletal mesh, using the settings below. Make sure Skeleton is set to None as you want the engine to generate a new skeleton for you.

5. You will need to regenerate its own Physics Asset, by Right-Clicking the newly imported Skeletal Mesh, then Create, then Physics Asset. Simple is best, and you can go into the Physics Asset editor to delete extra volumes the engine might have generated automatically, in order to get the simpliest shape possible to cover the weapon.